6 Plants That Add the Most Value to Your Property and Boost its Curb Appeal – and They’re All Super-Easy to Grow
Selling your home? Realtors say the right plants can raise your house value by as much as 20%: here's exactly what to buy for the best result
Strategic planting can offer a seriously good return on investment if you’re a homeowner in the competitive US housing market. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) estimates that good landscaping can add up to 20% to a home’s selling price, and cites a 100% ROI if you spend 10% of the property value on greenscaping its gardens. As well as adding key plants to your backyard, getting the planting right in your front yard can increase curb appeal, leading to a speedy sale.
So now we know: improving our gardens doesn’t just bring us joy, it can add real value to our homes, and we’ll recoup the cost of those plants when it’s time to sell. Research points to more mature planting being key to raising property prices, which means that adding these plants now is a smart move, even if you're not planning to move anytime soon. And that sounds to us like the best-ever excuse to go plant shopping!
But if you want the best returns, it pays to know which plants are perceived as high-value by buyers, and bring the biggest percentage increase to your home. Here’s our pick of the best plants to boost your property price as well as raise its curb appeal.
1. An Ornamental Tree for a Sense of Maturity
A tree is a key plant that can raise your house value, according to a 2021 survey of 1,250 US real estate agents conducted by Trees.com. It lends a sense of maturity, particularly to newbuild houses, and gives a garden structure.
An ornamental tree that offers year-round seasonal interest is a great way to add curb appeal. Our pick for a front yard would be an ornamental cherry tree, and choose a relatively recently introduced cultivar for maximum blooms and minimum mess. Weeping Extraordinare cherry tree, available from Fast Growing Trees and hardy in zones 5–8, is a great example, introduced in 2019. It’s laden with powderpuff double pink blooms in the prime home-selling spring season, then its glossy summer leaves turn a rich burgundy in fall and the arching branches are attractive through winter.
For your backyard, choose a well-behaved tree that brings dappled rather than heavy shade. A Japanese maple is an excellent choice for its dainty but dramatic foliage, and its root system is shallow, compact and non-destructive so doesn’t damage foundations. For a small garden, choose a variety with a compact, upright habit such as the fabulous Metamorphosa Japanese Maple, available from Nature Hills that only grows 5–13 feet tall. Its deeply lobed leaves cast light shade and put on a terrific color show: leaves emerge a chartreuse yellow in spring, becoming edged in pink, and fall brings fiery reds, oranges and even purple.
If you’ve got more space, then Japanese red maple (Acer palmatum ‘Atropurpurem’) also has an upright habit and lacy leaves with dramatic color, but slowly grows to a maximum height of 15–20 feet, and is available from Nature Hills.
2. A Reblooming Hydrangea for Knock-Out Summer Flowers
These easily-recognisable shrubs are coveted by many, and are Goldilocks-perfect for a front yard: not so large as to look like a potential problem but not so small that they don’t make an impact. For the maximum flowering time, choose a reblooming hydrangea.
If your home is a classic design, then Let’s Dance Loveable is a bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘SMNHMTB’) that combines the nostalgia of classic pink and blue tones but all the benefits of modern breeding. Bred to rebloom after each flush of flowers, it will give beautifully big mophead blooms from early summer till fall, a rich pink or purple in alkaline conditions or a deep violet-blue in acidic soil. Suitable for zones 5–9, it reaches 3–4 feet tall and wide and is available from Nature Hills.
For a more modern house, rebloomer smooth hydrangea Incrediball (Hydrangea arborescens ‘Abetwo’) creates quite a show with colossal blooms that measure up to a foot across in cool white and lime green tones. These football-sized flowers bloom from midsummer to fall and, despite those immense flowers, its sturdy stems keep this shrub flop-free. Suitable for zones 4–9, it’s available from Burpee.
Or why not make a statement with the incredible bi-colored blooms and near-black leaves of Eclipse bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Bailmacseven’)? While it’s not a rebloomer, its flowers remain intact through the growing season, gradually deepening in color before drying to a beautiful buff tone that lasts through winter. Suitable for zones 5–9, it’s available from Nature Hills.
3. A Sweet Climbing Rose for Wholesome Vibes
A rose rambling along your front fence or framing your front door will instantly make your house feel more welcoming to potential buyers and quadruple its curb appeal. Choose a fragrant variety of climbing rose for extra home-sweet-home feels, and hips for late-season color.
Our pick is the Eden climbing rose (Rosa ‘MEIviolin’) which is reminiscent of an old-fashioned English rose and suitable for zones 5–9. It repeat-flowers month after month from early summer to the first frosts with blooms of soft pink with hints of cream, and has a delicate lilac perfume. It’s a fast grower but only reaches 12 foot, so is easy to keep tidy, and is available from Amazon.
4. Lush Hosta Leaves to Smarten Up a Shady Corner
A trick that many garden designers use to make small yards feel bigger is to brighten up otherwise overlooked shady corners with hostas. Choose a variegated variety with pale margins to bring interest, and satiny foliage to reflect what sunlight there is, and you’ll turn a forgotten spot into an inviting corner.
A great choice is Hosta ‘Patriot’ because, as well as ticking those boxes, it’s slug resistant – and slugs are the nemesis of most hostas! – and thrives in full as well as partial shade. Hardy in zones 3–9, it has pretty nectar-rich lavender flowers in July and August, too. The trick is to plant the same variety en-masse, and Lowes offer good-value multipacks of five plants.
5. Lavender to Signal Water-Wise Gardening
Xeriscaping is becoming an increasingly popular way to garden as water becomes a more precious resource. When viewing, most buyers are conscious of how much a house and garden will cost to maintain, and drought-tolerant plants will send a strong signal that water bills won’t be an issue. Indeed, ASLA found that 83% of respondents to a 2018 member survey considered drought-tolerant plants to be high-demand, high-value additions.
Lavender is widely recognised as a drought-tolerant plant, even among non-gardeners, but make sure the variety you choose performs in terms of aesthetics, too. Grosso lavender (Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’) gets a big tick in the climate-resilient box, being cold-hardy in zones 5–10 and extremely drought- and heat-tolerant, standing up to arid summers better than many other lavenders. But it really performs in looks and scent, too. Earning it the nickname ‘fat lavender’, ‘Grosso’ produces 6-inch showy flower spikes that are superbly fragrant from midsummer through fall.
Because it grows so happily in poor soil, this cultivar will cope in your front garden alongside a wall or sidewalk, or why not replace a section of your water-guzzling front lawn with a gravelled strip edged with a low hedge of this easy-grow beauty? Available from Nature Hills, it’s best planted in spring or fall.
6. Creeping Plants for Well-Tended Borders
A 2023 report by the National Association of Realtors found that focusing on neat, tidy and low-maintenance, yet aesthetically pleasing outdoor spaces provides the highest return when preparing a home for sale. And while all the research points towards mature, impactful plants bringing the biggest return on investment, there’s a group of petite plants that will significantly contribute to the overall impression of your plot.
Spreading groundcover plants do a great job of covering patches of bare soil and disguising ugly gaps between pavers, but also keeping borders weed-free. Here they act as a living mulch to keep moisture in the soil and, if you choose colorful cultivars, add vibrancy to boot. The result? A neat, tidy and low-maintenance yet aesthetically pleasing space – bingo!
Creeping thyme is reliably perennial in zones 4–9 and forms a 3-inch-high fragrant, pollinator-friendly mat of tiny leaves and blooms, slowly spreading to a foot wide. The regular purple Thymus serpyllum is quick to germinate and seeds are available from Amazon – simply tucking seeds with a sprinkling of soil into paver gaps is a super-easy way to pretty-up a past-its-best path. Or choose Thymus praecox ‘Coccineus’, available from Nature Hills, for beautiful rosy-red flowers in a border. Creeping thyme is super-easy to propagate by diving plants in spring or fall, so it’s economical to buy one or two plants and make lots of babies over the next few years.
If you want a faster result, or your border is in partial shade, try creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) instead. Its trailing stems quickly grow to a dense 2-inch-tall mat of around 18 inches, smothering weeds, and its striking chartreuse tones create a fabulous backdrop to show off your bigger blooms. Available as a pack of four plants from Amazon, this tough perennial is reliably hardy in zones 3–9.
